Current bag screening methods at entry points to secure areas in airports and other security sensitive installations are essentially manual systems that take little advantage of today's computerized technologies. Typically, situated at the entry to an airport concourse, for instance, is a security checkpoint station having x-ray machines for inspection of carry-on baggage. An inspector who examines the x-ray images of bags passing through a unit is stationed at each x-ray machine. If an inspector sees a potential threat object he/she typically stops image inspection and verbally alerts search personnel stationed at the end of the x-ray machine conveyor to remove the bag in question to search for the object. Often the search person is called over to the x-ray image monitor to look at the object on the screen to help in the search of the baggage. In the meantime, flow of traffic through the security checkpoint halts while this communication is going on. Lines at these x-ray machines are notoriously long and can be quite slow, especially with today's increased threats of terrorism.
Additionally there are no detailed records kept of people, baggage, and objects passing through security checkpoints in our airports or at other security sensitive installations. With the thousands of people, bags, packages, etc. being screened daily at a checkpoint it is impossible for security personnel to accurately remember and keep track of who or what passed through their checkpoint, even just a few minutes earlier.
The inventors have, in a previous invention, utilized computerized pointer technology, such as a touch screen, to select and define the spatial position of objects selected by an inspector from within a mixture of objects (U.S. Pat. No. 6,124,560). The present invention extends these capabilities to provide not only location of selected objects to a computer but additionally to provide instant electronic communications among security checkpoint personnel of the presence, appearance, and location of selected objects and provides that this information along with the images of the selected objects within their mixture of objects and associated data be electronically stored in a searchable computerized database. The present invention further provides that computerized algorithms can utilize this information to learn the characteristics of selected objects over time so to allow the computer to automatically help in the selection of similar objects.